Tag Archives: judge

THE BOOK OF ACTS – THE LINE IN THE SAND

Bible Study, ,

THE LINE IN THE SAND

“God overlooks it as long as you don’t know any better — but that time is past. The unknown is now known, and He’s calling for a radical life-change. He has set a day when the entire human race will be judged and everything set right. And He has already appointed the judge, confirming Him before everyone by raising Him from the dead.

“At the phrase “raising Him from the dead”, the listeners split: Some laughed at him and walked off, making jokes; others said, ‘Let’s do this again. We want to hear more.’ But that was it for the day, and Paul left. There were still others, it turned out, who were convinced then and there, and stuck with Paul — among them Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris.” Acts 17:30-34 (The Message).

Here is an evangelist at his best! First of all, he knew his audience. They were mainly Greeks with a philosophical background and, at the same time, steeped in the traditions of their Greek and Roman idolatry. Paul’s point of contact was the shrine he found to the God nobody knew. At least they acknowledged that there was a God out there somewhere that humans didn’t invent.

He set out to introduce them to this God, first of all as Creator, and then as Judge. That must have been a shock to his hearers. Creator, yes, but Judge? That meant that they were accountable to Him, and some didn’t like that. The implication was twofold — what did He require and when would this happen?

In their religion, life was a haphazard affair. It was their role to appease the gods to avert annoying them, with dire consequences. They needed their protection and their intervention when necessary but there was no guarantee that either would happen. Anything bad was attributed to the wrath of the gods, but they were, unfortunately, unpredictable and capricious. There was no knowing what they would do.

Worst of all, the gods didn’t always see eye to eye. They were selfish and self-centred and acted just like humans. They were powerful in their own portfolios but they didn’t always use their power for the benefit of their devotees, and they often encroached on one another’s territory. That’s a problem when there are too many gods!

To introduce one God who had set a day to judge the world was a new thought altogether. That meant that He had a standard by which He would judge and that there would be some sort of punishment for those who didn’t measure up. Oh and, by the way, He had also chosen the Judge — a guy who died and came back to life again! That put the cat among the pigeons!

Gods could do that because they were gods, but a man! No way! The hearers immediately split into the three typical groups: Those who dismissed his words as a joke, those who were interested and wanted to know more, and those who accepted his words as the truth and embraced them.

As always, it was the resurrection that caused the parting of the ways. Why? It did not fit their world view. Paul understood that the world views of the Jews and Greeks were vastly different.

“For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:20-24 (NIV).

What was it that exposed the attitude of Paul’s hearers? It was the foolishness of the message. A dead man rising — that’s what caught them out. Funny how many people who claim to be believers are happy to talk about God? But Jesus, dying and rising? Yet that is the cornerstone of our faith — and the line in the sand.

DO NOT JUDGE

Christian Life, , ,

The story of the Prodigal Son is the most beautiful of all Jesus’ stories.

It’s a familiar story because we know it well and because it is the story of many families.  It’s not the story line that surprises me, however, but the outcome.  How many fathers would receive back a wayward son without reproach?  How many fathers would treat that son like royalty even though he still smelt like the pig pen?

There’s another line in the story that catches my attention because it is an all-too-familiar scene that plays out in human families and in the family of God.  Have you noticed the  contrast between the attitudes of the younger and the older son?  Jesus could have ended His story with the celebration in honour of the son’s return, but He didn’t.  From a literary point of view the story has a rather weak ending but Jesus wasn’t interested in literature.  He was interested in true life.  He tells us the sequel.

The younger son was a rebel and a bad boy, but he came home with these words on his lips, “Father, I have sinned.”  He owned his bad behaviour and repented before God and his father.  He didn’t blame his parents or his circumstances for his choices.  He acknowledged his guilt and was pardoned and restored to his family.

The words on the lips of the older brother reveal the attitude of his heart.  The younger brother said, “I have sinned.”  With scathing contempt the older brother pointed his finger at his younger brother and said, “You have sinned.”  How many older brothers are there who point the finger at others and say, “You have sinned.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes this point very clear.  “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”  Matthew 7:1,2.

Who was set free from guilt in this story?  Certainly not the older brother.  He held on to his guilt of hypocrisy and pride while the “sinner” was forgiven.

What about you?  Have you forgiven and released from your judgment every person who has offended you?  Jesus made it clear that, if you do not, you will not be forgiven.

Christ Is The Reality

Bible Study, , , ,

CHRIST IS THE REALITY

Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ (Col. 2: 16-17).

This is quite startling! Paul was a Jew and had been a fanatical stickler for the Law, and yet he made a radical statement which contradicted everything he had believed in and taught as a Pharisee and a rabbi.

Religious festivals, New Moon celebrations and Sabbaths were the backbone of Jewish life. They were the weekly, monthly and annual festivals which brought the family and the nation together regularly to cement their unity and to express their faith in God and their anticipation of their Messiah. Elaborate rituals were developed around each celebration which were full of symbolism and meaning for God’s people.

Yet Paul was saying that all of these celebrations and rituals were no longer necessary in their family and national lives? Was he not treading on thin ice by contradicting God’s commands? What right had he to tell God’s people that all of these were fulfilled and done away with in Christ?

As a disciple of Jesus, and an apostle appointed by God, Paul had authority to interpret and ‘bind’ Jesus’s yoke on His followers. The ritualistic celebration of special days was part of the old yoke of Judaism which Jesus fulfilled and abolished by His life, death and resurrection. As his understanding grew, Paul clearly recognised that these special days were prophetic of Messiah. To continue celebrating them was to say, in effect, that they were still anticipating the coming of their Messiah when He had already come.

In what way did Jesus fulfil these prophetic actions? This demands a much more detailed study of the meaning of the Sabbath and the annual festivals which God commanded them to celebrate in Leviticus 23 than we can do here.

However, reading Hebrews 3 and 4 will clear up the issue of the Sabbath, for a start. The command to rest from their weekly labour was prophetic of their perpetual rest of faith in Jesus which sets them and us free from the ‘labour’ of trying to be righteous by keeping God’s laws.

The seven annual feasts were prophetic of the major events of Jesus’s first coming and symbolise what will happen when He returns. He fulfilled the first four feasts in order: He was God’s Passover lamb, sacrificed to deliver us from bondage to sin; He fulfilled the Feast of Unleavened Bread by removing our sin from us just as the Israelites were commanded to remove all leaven from their homes; He fulfilled the Feast of Firstfruits by becoming the firstfruits of the resurrection; He fulfilled the Feast of Pentecost by sending the Holy Spirit to begin the ingathering of the harvest – the church.

There are three feasts yet to be fulfilled when Jesus comes again; the Feast of Trumpets – the announcement of His return; the Day of Atonement when sin will be judged and removed forever and Feast of Tabernacles when God will take up residence with His people, not in booths in the wilderness but in an eternal new heaven and new earth where all the effects of Adam’s disobedience will be removed forever.

That brings me to another important topic. If Jesus has fulfilled days, months and annual celebrations, and did away with food taboos, why do some streams in the church still make them obligatory and legalistically hold to them, especially the Sabbath and food taboos? Is this not a denial of what Jesus accomplished on the cross?

Paul said categorically, ‘Do not let anyone judge you . . .’ We cannot help it if people judge us but what we can help is being affected by their judgment. If someone judges us, it comes from their scruples, not ours.

Jesus gave us two sacraments to observe, not as prophetic of what He would do, but as a remembrance of what He has done; the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance of His sacrifice to seal the New Covenant; baptism is a celebration of His death, burial and resurrection which He accomplished for us to set us free from our slavery to sin and death.

Even festivals like Christmas and Easter, which have become nothing more than an opportunity for merchants to peddle their wares – their success in the commercial world is reckoned by their profits –  and people to overindulge, are not rooted in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ but in paganism which has been ‘Christianised’ for convenience.

There is no such thing as ‘Put Christ back into Christmas’ which is the hopeless cry of many churches, because Jesus Christ was never in Christmas. How dare we involve Him in the frenzy, overspending, overindulgence, pandering to the demands of children and hypocrisy of the ‘silly season’? There is very little about Christmas or Easter that resembles the Spirit of Jesus. He has been tagged on to paganism to make it acceptable and to hold us in bondage to tradition, and believers the world over have been sucked into this tradition and are enraged by anyone who dares to challenge it.

Come on, church! Let’s get back to the Word of God and to the truth! When you see what goes on at Christmas in the name of Jesus, ask yourself honestly, ‘Is this why Jesus came?’ Does He really identify with Christmas? Even the name of the season, ‘Christmas’ is an insult to Him and trivialises what He did for us. Christ-mass implies the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. How can we wish people a merry sacrifice of Jesus?

If we are true worshippers of the Lord Jesus Christ, let us put Him and His life and death back into perspective. Simplify your life. Live in the wonder of His salvation which we remember in two simple observances, and in the daily reality of the rest He made possible for us by removing our need to satisfy God’s holy requirements.

He is, after all, everything we need!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Each One For Himself

Bible Study, , ,

EACH ONE FOR HIMSELF

“You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.

“As it is written:

‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me: every tongue will acknowledge God.’

“So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.” Romans 14:10-12.

Who can answer that question? It’s like asking a little child who has just been caught red-handed with his hand in the cookie jar, “Why did you do it?” Of course he doesn’t know why. He wanted the cookie in spite of a warning! Like the silly answer my 44-year-old son sometimes gives me, “Because I can!”

The real reason why we judge a brother or sister, or treat them with contempt is that we can’t keep our hands “out of the cookie jar”. We don’t have the courage to own up to our own guilt, so we take it out on someone else. Underneath that is another problem. We are insecure. We are not fully convinced of who we are so we need to control someone else.

It all started in the Garden of Eden. Adam was caught red-handed. God instructed him not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or there would be consequences but, just like a little child, he didn’t believe his Father. He had to try it out for himself. When it all went wrong, just like a child, he blamed his wife and, to make matters worse, he blamed God for giving her to him! And she blamed the serpent and, unfortunately for the serpent, he had no-one else to blame!

We have an inbuilt capacity to dodge responsibility by pinning it on someone else. We might even acknowledge guilt but to be honest enough to admit, “I did it and I take full responsibility for my action,” is another story. But how does that fit in with judging someone else or treating him with contempt because he doesn’t believe or behave the way I do?

There is perhaps more than one reason why we do it. Pride sets us up above others and prompts us to think that we can set the standard for them.  We do this when we are so sure that we are right that we try to force others to believe as we do. Religion does this to the extreme, even killing people when force does not work. The Pharisees killed Jesus because they were convinced that they were right.

Underneath pride lies a more sinister reason for inflexibility – a sinful lifestyle that does not want to be exposed. The Pharisees hated Jesus because He read them like a book. In response, they both judged Him and treated Him with contempt – calling Him a glutton and a drunkard and even Beelzebub, and having Him executed as a blasphemer.

But why do believers sometimes resort to treating a brother or sister in that way? We may not be guilty of blatant sin, and yet we can’t keep our hands off our fellow-believers. I believe that it comes from insecurity – we need others in our camp to bolster us up because we are afraid to stand alone on our convictions. We need approval and, when we don’t get it, we turn on them.

We need to take our cue from Jesus. He was the Son of God and He knew it. At His baptism He had received His Father’s approval and He lived in that security through every experience of His earthly life. He had no need to prove Himself by gathering supporters around Him. He lived under His Father’s approval and left it to them to make up their own minds about Him by examining the evidence.

“But,” you may say, “God has never audibly told me that I am His son.” True, but it is written very clearly in His Word.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are.” 1 John 3:1.

If you are not convinced, what about this one? “Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” John 1:12.

Only when we are secure in the awareness of our Father’s approval can we allow others to follow their convictions without interference. God does not hold us responsible for what others believe and do, but we will give an account before Him for ourselves. Each of us will be judged according to the truth we have received.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Guard Your Own Heart

Bible Study, , , ,

GUARD YOUR OWN HEART

“Accept one another whose faith is weak without quarrelling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows him to eat anything but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge another man’s servant? To their own master servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” Romans 14:1-4.

Is this really a problem today? Who cares what another believer eats or wears or even drives or lives in?

In the Apostle Paul’s day, it was an issue for both Jew and Gentile believers – Jews because their conscience was shaped by the dietary laws of their religion and culture, and Gentiles because they bought their meat from the market after it had been offered to idols.

There were two matters of conscience that had to be dealt with: What effect did the food they ate have on their spirits, and did meat offered to idols in a pagan temple have any power to influence them? But, for Paul there was another and more subtle problem – that of judging.

From God’s perspective, judging was more serious than what a person ate. Remember what Jesus said about food? Since it goes into the stomach and passes out of the body, it does not have any power over a person’s heart. It is from the heart, not from what one eats, that wickedness in all its forms originates, and what one eats cannot change the heart, for good or evil. On the other hand, judging another person is a subtle form of idolatry because the one who judges sets himself above the other person.

What about eating meat that had been offered to idols? Does that meat not have the power to influence the eater for evil? Was there not some sort of demonic transfer that took place when the meat was offered to the idol? It all depends on what a person believes.

Never forget that the devil is a liar and that the only language he speaks is the language of lies. His most powerful weapon is deception. He holds people captive to fear only if they believe that he still has power over them. Jesus exposed and utterly defeated him at the cross but he tries to hold people captive by suggesting that he has power over them.

It is up to every believer to decide who his master is? How tragic that many Christians still fear the devil although they say that they trust in Jesus. In the everyday, practical issues of life, we have to ask the question, “Did the cross work?” According to Jesus, when He cried out, “It is finished!” on the cross, He completed everything necessary to reverse what Adam did in the Garden of Eden. He made a public spectacle of the devil, unmasked and defeated him and took away his power to deceive and destroy.

“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Colossians 2:13-15.

What kind of food we eat and where we got it from should never be an issue because it has no power to influence our hearts except the power we give it when we act out of fear and not faith. However, when we judge someone who has no problem with what he eats because our faith is weak, we usurp the role of master and set ourselves up as the standard of judgment.

“Let it go,” said Paul. “He has a Master who will take care of him. It’s not your problem.” When we try to control someone else, we subtly expose our own insecurity. When we judge another, we expose our own guilt. Our mouths are the mirror of our hearts. By focussing on someone else’s supposed weakness or guilt, we deflect attention from ourselves in case we are exposed.

What is the solution? Rest in Jesus and take care of your own conscience. Trust God. You are not responsible for your brother’s conscience.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.